Five Worlds Collide, Zero Exit
by Mislagnissa
Summary: After a botched summoning, Louise suddenly finds herself responsible for stranding five very different Saitos on Halkegenia, and things just keep getting weirder from there.


"Oh shut up, all of you!" cried Louise. The other students stopped laughing as she turned to them.

"I am sick and tired of you belittling me! Even if I can't cast spells like the rest of you, I have more magic in my little finger than you all have in your entire bodies combined! In the name of the founder, the pentacle of the five elements, and the Lord God in Heaven above, I swear upon my sisters, my parents, and all ancestors that I will summon the greatest familiar of all ti—"

BOOM!

Apparently, Louise was too busy berating her classmates to realize she was going through the motions of casting a spell at the same time. The resulting smoke was quite dense, and left the other students coughing and sputtering while the Professor called for everyone to remain calm. Louise, being used to the explosions, wasn't fazed, though her vision was impaired. As the smoke began to clear, she noticed a shape on the ground about ten feet away from her.

Scratch that, _five_ shapes.

Lying on the ground were three young boys about her age, a dark-skinned white-haired young man in orange and black clothing that resembled that of a navy captain, and a black wolf-like animal. The three young boys all had the same features, but that was where their similarities ended.

One of them wore a blue shirt and pants, and to Louise's horror she could see ten greenish tendrils or tentacles growing from his lower back, spread limply around him like an octopus.

The second was naked aside from a pair of torn trousers and rusty manacles around his wrists and ankles; bizarrely, his head sprouted a shock of black feathers instead of hair, his hands and feet resembled the talons of a bird instead of human extremities, and feathers grew from various parts of his body in irregular patches; much to her horror (more so than with the first boy), the boy was dirtied and bloodied, his wrists and ankles rubbed raw by the manacles and his back was crisscrossed with several fresh, bleeding slashes as if from a whip. But the feathered boy's condition wasn't as nearly immediately fatal as the third boy's.

The third boy wore similar clothes to the first, though they were severely torn. Various parts of his body has been grafted or replaced with metallic prostheses clearly more advanced than any mechanical object Louise had ever seen. More pressing, however, was the large gash in his side, leaking blood and a white fluid that has no business leaking out of a human body.

Beside the three boys was a black wolf, that, as Louise watched, magically changed like the shifting of mist into yet another black-haired foreign-featured boy, completely naked and covered in dirt and leaves, but otherwise unharmed.

"What the…" Louise began, unable to process all these things at once. The students around her likewise began murmuring to one another, too shocked to respond to the two horribly injured boys lying on the ground.

The white-haired, black-skinned man regained consciousness only seconds later, quickly getting to his feet and scanning the area around him. Much to Louise and the student's horror, he had pointed ears, which clearly suggested he was an elf of some kind. Professors Colbert quickly assumed a combat stance, preparing for the elf's homicidal frenzy. The elf, however, ignored them after glancing at them once, before his eyes settled on the two bleeding, unconscious boys at his feet.

He quickly yelled something unintelligible at the assembled students, before kneeling beside the boys and chanting more unintelligible words and waving his hands. His hands immediately glowed with white light, and the wounds on the two boy's bodies began healing rapidly. The elf repeated this action two more times before seeming satisfied, and then glanced back at the students and professor.

He spoke again in his unintelligible language, clearly frustrated. Professor Colbert stepped forward and responded, confident that the strange elf wasn't here to attack anyone if he hadn't already, but still on his guard.

"We don't understand what you're saying. Could you switch to Tristainian?"

The dark elf blinked, and then slapped his forehead. He cast a spell over himself before replying.

"I said, get a doctor, or a medic, or something! These two kids need medical attention. They're stable for now, but they'll need rest to recover."

Professor Colbert quickly shooed the students away, except for Louise, and then told her to stay where she was while he left to fetch help. Louise, suddenly regaining her senses, stepped forward.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The dark elf glanced at her.

"Are you the one who teleported me here?"

"Will you kill me if I say yes?"

"No. In fact, I'm rather glad you did."

He stood up and approached, offering his hand, and smiled.

"My name is Saito Hiraga, of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Tokugawa, Wizard and Prelate Extraordinaire and direct descendant of the Scorpion King himself. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss…?"

Louise glanced at the offered hand, before tentatively reaching out her own and taking it.

"Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, youngest daughter of the Duke de La Vallière."

She glanced up at him sheepishly.

"So you're not going to kill me?"

The dark elf raised his eyebrows.

"Why would you think I would do that?"

"Elves hate humans and want to exterminate us."

"Well, I'm not one of those particular elves." _My people just use humans as slaves,_ he was careful not to say. "The elves of your land are different from those of my land. Where I come from elves are tree-huggers who consider humans to be uncivilized fools who despoil nature, but they aren't genocidal."

"They? You mean you're not an elf?"

"I'm a dark elf."

"I've never heard of that. What's the difference?"

"Dark elves have dark skin, obviously, and we—"

"Oh, my head!"

Louise and the dark elf were interrupted when the boy with tentacles growing out of his back suddenly sat up and moaned.

"Ah! What are you?!" Louise cried, suddenly remembering him.

"Huh?"

"He can't understand you, Miss Vallière."

"What? Why not?"

"Different languages. I'm using a _tongues_ spell."

"Oh."

The dark elf walked over to the boy and spoke a few words to him. The boy responded, sounding confused. They went back and forth a few times before the dark elf stepped away from him and turned back to Louise.

"Well?" she asked.

"To answer your first question, he says he's doesn't really know what he is aside from the fact that his mother is cult leader, so I shudder to think about what manner of sanity-shattering abomination his father is. Oh, and his name is Saito Hiraga, same as me," he added.

Louise simply stared at him, her mouth opening and closing like a fish's.

"Ahwoo!"

The three turned to the nude, dirt-and-leaves-covered boy (who had previously been a wolf), who had just regained consciousness and was stretching as though waking from sleep.

"Ayee!" Louise cried, quickly turning away, cheeks red with embarrassment.

"Ahh!" The boy likewise cried, quickly covering himself. "Where am I?! This isn't my house!"

The dark elf and the pinkette both glanced at each other. This was going to be a _long_ day.

* * *

Louise stared at the two boys lying in the two beds in the school infirmary. She'd thought she'd have been happy to have summoned not one, but _five_ familiars, each of which was an intelligent magical creature of some kind. But she wasn't happy. These familiars were so strange that she had no context in which to put them. She was _confused_.

The dark elf was nearby, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. The tentacle boy and the wolf boy were sitting in other chairs next to him. Thankfully they'd been able to find the wolf boy a change of clothes, or else he would've died of embarrassment. The dark elf glanced up from the book he was writing in.

"A copper for your thoughts?" he asked.

"Who could've done this? Who attacked them?" she asked back.

"_He_ was abused as a slave," he said, gesturing to the boy with feathers. "And _he_ was caught in some accident or conflict." He gestured to the boy with mechanical enhancements, who had already begun undergoing some manner of self-repair that the dark elf didn't understand anymore than Louise did.

"You should be glad. You're the one who saved them," he said.

"I know should feel that way, but… you're all so strange."

"Well, you're just as strange to us," the tentacle boy piped up.

"And we're just as strange to each other, even if we have the same names and faces," the wolf boy finished for him.

That was another thing that Louise found really confusing. The two Saitos and the elf had the same names and faces; even most of their personalities were identical. While they were unconscious, the same was probably true for the feathered Saito and the Saito with metal body parts. The two conscious Saitos had called him a "cyborg," but no one knew what the feathered Saito was.

The tentacled Saito and the Saito who had been a wolf had mentioned something about "parallel realities" and "syfy novels," but Louise couldn't make heads or tails of it and the dark elf didn't understand it either. Suffice to say, it had been made clear to her that none of the boys were from this _planet_. Which was another thing that should've made her happy, being able to summon familiars across such unimaginably vast distances, but again it was too far outside her realm of comprehension.

"What's with you?" she asked, pointing at the Saito who had been a wolf. "You were a wolf when I summoned you here, but then you changed into a boy. What are you?"

"I'm a werewolf," he said, grinning. "Haven't you seen a werewolf before, Hermione?"

He and the tentacled Saito chuckled at their little in-joke. Neither Louise nor the dark elf understood why they insisted on calling her "Hermione."

"Stop calling me that! My name is Louise Françoise—never mind," she said, giving up. "What's a werewolf, anyway?"

"A person who can change into wolf," wolfboy explained.

"And that's it?"

"That's it. Oh, and I can enter the reverie at will. Everyone in my family can."

"Reverie?"

"It's also called the dark path, the spectral realm and the gloom. It's a spooky distorted counterpart of our world that exists on the other sides of reflective surfaces and inside our dreams and stuff. We use it to travel beneath reality like a subway, which really helps when you have witch-hunters in town or need to get out of the sunlight. I'm don't know if it exists here, since I haven't tried to enter since I arrived."

Louise sighed. She turned and moved back to the unconscious feathered boy. She unconsciously swallowed. The poor kid had been seriously abused, and apparently for a while, judging by the faded scars all over his limbs and torso. Oddly, his face was still pristine. Louise tentatively reached out a hand, and brushed a loose feather behind his ear. That turned out to be a mistake. The boy's eyes popped wide open and focused on her. Immediately, the boy began thrashing and screaming in his own language. Louise jumped back and cried out in shock. The dark elf quickly stood up and ran to the boy's side, trying to calm him down.

"You're safe! You're safe!" He repeated.

After a few more moments of panicking, the feathered boy finally settled down. He sat up in the bed, breathing heavily. He looked up at the dark elf.

"I'm really safe? They're not here?" he said.

"No one's going to hurt you anymore. I swear. What's your name?"

"I'm Saito. Saito Hiraga."

"Can you tell me what happened to you, Saito?"

"The Raven Clan."

"Who?"

"They took me. They made me sing, steal, fight. I became one of them. I remembered before. I ran through the thorns. Now I'm here."

The dark elf thought for a moment.

"Do you have any friends, family?"

"They weren't home any more. I couldn't find them." The boy's eyes began tearing up.

"Alright, I think it's time for you to rest," the dark elf finished.

The feathered Saito curled up on the bed, and the dark elf gently pulled up the blanket. He turned back to Louise.

"Don't startle him again. He's clearly traumatized."

Louise looked at her feet guiltily.

"What did he say?"

"Not much. His name's Saito. He has no family."

Louise swallowed. She hadn't thought about that. Did she just drag people away from their homes and families? Summoning suddenly seemed a lot less fun than she had thought. At that moment, the door opened and Professor Colbert and Headmaster Osmond strolled in.

"Headmaster!" Louise said.

"Good day, Miss Vallière. Are these the familiars you summoned?"

"Y-yes. They are."

The dark elf suddenly burst out laughing. Louise, Colbert and Osmond stared at him. He laughed for a few more moments before regaining his composure.

"I'm sorry," he began, "but are you saying we were summoned to be _familiars_?"

"Yes, you were summoned as part of the spring summoning ritual, a sacred ritual that all second-year students are required to perform," Osmond replied. He held his chin in thought. "But I've never heard of anyone summoning five familiars at once, much less familiars of your… variety."

"Does this mean you'll send us back?" Wolfboy and tentacleboy asked.

Osmond glanced over at them.

"Send you back? Why would you want to go back?"

The three Saitos simply stared at him as though he had grown a second head.

"We have responsibilities back home. Friends, families, jobs, everything! What did you think we were doing before we were summoned here?" the dark elf explained.

Louise began to feel even guiltier and stared down at her feet.

"Oh. Quite right," Osmond replied. "Unfortunately, there's isn't a spell to send you back. We never needed one before."

"So we're stuck here?" The three Saitos cried simultaneously.

"For the time being, yes. I'm terribly sorry, but there's nothing I can do." And with that, Osmond turned and left, predicting that they wouldn't react well.

The dark elf clutched his head in horror.

"Dear gods!" he thought aloud. "Sakura is going to think I died along with the ship! She'll shack up with my best friend and he'll raise my unborn daughter as his own! This is terrible!"

Wolfboy and tentacleboy glanced at him, then at each other, then back.

"Yeah, your problems are definitely worse than ours, man," they said simultaneously.

At this point, Louise just fell to her knees and began sobbing.

* * *

Louise walked down the castle parapet. A few meters away, Tokugawa was leaning against a crenel, chin on his hands in a steepling pose, and staring up at the two moons. She walked toward him, but stopped a few steps away.

"I can understand if you hate me," she said.

He glanced at her.

"I don't hate you," he said. "If it wasn't for you I really would be dead right now." He chuckled. "So there's that."

Louise let out a sigh of relief. Tokugawa also sighed, though mournfully.

"I just wish I could feel her scales one last time."

Louise froze and then did a double take.

"Wait, did you say scales?"

"Yes."

She stared at him as though he'd grown a second head.

"Why would your wife have scales?"

"She's a kobold."

"A what now?"

He gesticulated with one hand.

"About three feet tall, looks like the lovechild of a lizard and a dog that's learned to walk on two legs."

Louise began to say "Why would you marry _that_?" but stopped herself.

"Why is your wife not a dark elf like you?" she asked instead.

"The Republic is very progressive."

Louise raised her eyebrows.

"Progressive?"

"Among other things, we treat goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, bugbears, gnolls, giants and countless other marginalized races as people rather than using them as target practice."

"But orcs are ruthless savages who raid villages and _eat children_!"

"Because you humans are constantly oppressing them! If you actually bothered to open relations with them, give them supplies, medicine, birth control, culture, and education, they can be surprisingly pleasant people. Half of the races in the Republic used to eat _their own children_ before we just euthanized all the adults and raised the children under our own culture."

They stared at each other for a few moments.

"Well, I suppose that's one to civilize those revolting savages. Wait, what am I saying? That sounds horrible!"

"I'm glad you think so." It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

A quizzical expression came over Louise.

"Why birth control?"

He gave her a deadpan expression.

"Many of those humanoids have high rates of reproduction, and don't have access to birth control herbs like humans do. Their populations explode beyond what they can support on their own, forcing them to raid other humanoids for supplies. Eating their own children is inefficient."

"I never knew any of that," she said.

"I'm not surprised. Most planets are uncivilized like that. Thankfully benevolent overlords like Sauron, the Shadow Lord, and Darkenrahl decided to put a stop to all that ethnic cleansing nonsense."

"Who are they?"

"You see, centuries ago people like them united the oppressed races on various worlds and led them to overthrow the ruling demi-human _bourgeoisie_. Then they developed spelljammer helms and starships to spread the message of peace and equality to the stars. And that's how the Democratic People's Republic of Planes and Planets came to be."

"You said you were from another planet millions of kilometers away, but what does that mean exactly? I don't quite understand."

He pointed at the night sky.

"See those stars? Every single one of them is a flaming ball of hot gas, some not unlike your sun. Much as how this world orbits your sun, other worlds orbit some of those stars. Some of those worlds harbor life not unlike us. I come from one such world."

Louise nodded.

"I see. But that doesn't explain why there would be identical twins from different worlds. How does that make sense?"

"You believe in the afterlife, don't you?"

Louise nodded.

"Well, I'm not an expert on the matter," he continued, "but according to wizards who study the planes, all these stars and the worlds orbiting them are collectively known as the Prime Material Plane. The various afterlives are other planes, separate but connected to the Prime Material. However, there are theorized to be _other_ Prime Material Planes like this one."

"Other planes? So there could be another Halkegenia on another plane?"

He nodded.

"Exactly. Some of the other Primes may be nearly identical to this one, while others could be drastically different. Likewise, there could be different instances of the same person, who lived different lives but have similar appearances and personalities." He chuckled. "Of course, now we know that to be a fact and not a theory. Too bad we can't tell the wizards back home about this. It would open whole new fields of study."

"I suppose that would be true," said Louise. "We don't have any understanding of other worlds like your mages do, but I think it would be fascinating to study."

"Maybe you could become my apprentice sometime?" The dark elf offered.

Louise shook her head.

"I can't," she said.

He cocked his head.

"Why not?"

Louise sighed.

"I can't perform magic."

Tokugawa narrowed his eyes.

"But you summoned us here. You can certainly perform magic."

"That's the only thing I can perform right. Every other spell I try to cast just creates an explosion."

"Then you're being taught the wrong profession of magic."

She perked up at that.

"Wrong profession of magic? What other profession is there?"

"Lots, actually. Wizards, sorcerers, witches, alchemists, bards, artificers, mystics, oracles, warlocks, et cetera. We just have to find a magical profession that fits your abilities."

Louise was overjoyed at this news.

"So you can help me?"

"Of course. I need you to answer some questions first. How do you use magic? Do you prepare spells in advance or cast them spontaneously? How do you learn spells? Is there a limit to the number of spells you can know at one time? Is your magic arcane or divine? Does your magic require gold as a fuel source? What are your—"

Louise simply stared at him in complete lack of comprehension as he rattled off a list of questions. Magic where he was from sounded _really_ complex.

"Wait, wait, wait, did you ask if I used gold as fuel source?"

"Yes."

She pursed her lips.

"Why would magic use gold as a fuel source?"

"You see, the more powerful spells the Republic makes use of require gold, or things that used to be worth gold before the Republic established a post-scarcity economy, to be expended to power the spell. Gold is also the only substance in the universe that magic in the Republic can't be used to replicate, as stupid as that sounds. But thankfully the Republic has opened trading relations with the Elemental Plane of Gold."

"Post-scarcity plane of what now?"

"Post-scarcity economy. It means we use magic to accomplish everything, negating the need for laborers or currency. The Elemental Plane of Gold is exactly what it sounds like: an entire plane representing the platonic ideal of gold and inhabited by elemental beings made of gold, creatures that eat gold, and lots of beings that generally want or have gold."

"I thought that's what you said."

"Louise, are you alright?" he asked.

She appeared to wavering unsteadily on her feet, but waved him off.

"Don't worry about me, I'm perfectly gluaahhgh—" her voiced gurgled as she suddenly fell into a dead faint.

Luckily Tokugawa caught her before she could hit the ground. Maybe being so frank with a lowtech wasn't the best idea.

* * *

"Headmaster, we demand that Miss Valliere be allowed to retry the ritual while we try to find a way to send us back to our home planes."

Osmond looked up from his white mouse familiar.

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that to be done. The ritual is sacred and to perform it a second time would be to insult our ancient traditions," he said with little emotion.

"To be frank, Headmaster, your traditions were never designed to account for situations like this. You have to make an exception for Louise," Tokugawa replied.

"I understand where you're coming from, Mister Hiraga, but even if I allow Miss Valliere to perform the ritual a second time, who's to say she won't just forcibly pull someone _else_ from their home? Miss Valiere may be limited solely to summoning humans and human-like people."

Louise gulped at his side, while Tokugawa merely sighed, and turned to gaze out the window.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take. All I ask is for _one_ second chance. If it doesn't work out, then I will take full responsibility for tutoring Louise in whatever magical talents she does possess."

Osmond stroked his chin for a moment, thinking.

"Alright," he said, "Louise gets one more chance to summon a familiar. But it will be on your head."

Louise muttered a happy "yes" under her breath.

"Thank you, Headmaster," Tokugawa replied.

A few minutes later, Louise and Tokugawa stood in front of the summoning circle in the courtyard. Louise was twitching with worry.

"Don't worry," he said beside her. "No matter what happens, I'm still going to teach you how to master your magic."

"Thanks," she replied.

The pinkette spoke the incantation again, her voice steady. Of course, just as she finished, another explosion occurred. Tokugawa coughed, inwardly cursing for forgetting to give himself a magical air bubble. Louise, meanwhile, waited for the smoke to clear, praying that she hadn't made another horrible accident. To her horror, however, the smoke cleared to reveal that in the middle of the summoning circle was _another_ Saito in his trademark blue sweatshirt. Thankfully just _one_, this time. However, she quickly noticed, he wasn't lying on the ground unconscious. He was crouched, and there was a rusty sword strapped to his back. This new Saito rose, and to Tokugawa and Louise's surprise…

"Hello Louise," he said, gazing at her with tears forming in his eyes.

He walked up to her, stopping only inches away from her.

"I know you don't know me yet, but I'm really happy to see you again after all this time."

"I… that is… what?"

"Wait… you know her?" Tokugawa interjected.

Saito glanced at the dark elf, confusion spreading across his face.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Saito Hiraga of House Tokugawa."

Saito stared at him as though he'd grown a second head.

"You have the same name I do."

"Yeah, about that…"

"What is going on?!" Louise cried out in frustration.

"I'm wondering the same thing, partner," stated the sword on Saito's back.


End file.
